A Simple Solution to Employee Shift Management for Small Businesses

For service based businesses - a fully booked schedule is pretty much always the goal, right? A full house means your business is bringing in a ton of cash - awesome. However, with a surge in customers you probably have to schedule all employees and then manage them all - not so awesome.

How apt would you say your small business is when it comes to managing that sudden increased demand of staffing? For starters, you probably didn’t open your own business to be a general manager, you opened it for the love of your given industry/trade. Managing a ton of employees can start to take you away from that. Though you'd rather be doing what you love, you realize that you have to make certain employees are on task and keeping up with with the demand, or you’re going to quickly see customers change course and go toward your competitors. So, let's find a solution...

Here’s how Booker’s employee scheduling solution can give you back more time for what you love and make managing those “fully booked days” a breeze.

1. Organized Employee Shift Schedules

When customers are piling into your shop, you’ve got to make sure employees are able to quickly act and give assistance when needed. With Booker’s employee calendar, your schedule stays clean, sleek, and most importantly, easily readable for your staff. Employees can quickly see exactly where they need to be, what dogs they need to be servicing, and at what time.

During busy times, there is no room for error. Booker’s employee scheduling makes error free scheduling a reality. When you’re rushing to manually fill you employee shifts it leaves you vulnerable to making careless mistakes like double booking an employee or missing lapses in coverage. With the clean, high level of visibility of employee scheduling, you can clearly see when a scheduling mistake was made and can quickly fix it before any real damage is done.

2. Mobile Access to Your Schedule - Anytime, Anywhere

When times are hectic, you as the owner are always on the move, mingling with customers, servicing customers (if you’re one of those employee/owner hybrids), checking inventory, you name it. Bottom line, the ability to access your calendar while you're on the go is critical and Booker’s cloud-based calendar gives you just that.

Need to make a last-minute change in the schedule while you’re in the back checking inventory? No problem. One of your employees wants to double check what time their shift starts from their smartphone? Done. With Booker’s employee scheduling, you and your employees have access to the schedule from anywhere, at anytime.

3. Automated Internal Notifications

When customers are lining up and out the door, that’s difficult enough. On top of this, imagine one of your employees forget their shift and shows up late or worse… not at all. Now, that’s a nightmare.

Thankfully, Booker’s employee scheduling allows business owners to activate automated internal notifications. With this, all your groomers will receive a reminder alerting them of what time they need to be at work prior to their shift. As an owner, you can sleep sounder knowing that your groomers are being reminded of their shifts and will come into work on time and ready to groom.

4. Easier, More Organized Employee Records

When it comes to your employee records there’s a lot of information you should be keeping track of. For instance, you should record each employee’s hours to make sure that none of them violate break policies, and so you have a rough idea what payroll will look like at the end of the pay cycle. Additionally, having information regarding which clients each employee works best with can definitely help you when it comes to assigning certain employees to certain jobs/times. Access to this information helps to keep employees happy which in turn reflects in their overall performance and dovetails into your customer satisfaction.

This sounds like a lot to track, but Booker’s employee management solution helps you easily record information in a neat, organized manner. Employee information/notes can quickly be pulled at anytime. This way, when there’s a surge of customers you can quickly look to your employee records and know with 100% confidence the best employees to schedule, with whom and at what times.

Take a peek at how Booker’s employee scheduling could be the solution you've been looking for to conquer busy times and grow from the surge!

About the Author

John Rigo is a content marketer with Booker. His areas of expertise are writing and market research. John brings a unique perspective to the blogosphere with his extensive background in publishing. He also has a love for small and local businesses – how they work, how they grow, and why they succeed.